Building DevelOS

This guide covers building the DevelOS live ISO and boot-testing it in QEMU.

Requirements

Build from an Arch Linux or Arch-derived host with podman, base-devel, pacman-contrib, qemu or qemu-full, and OVMF firmware for UEFI install testing.

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel pacman-contrib podman qemu-full edk2-ovmf

Arch-derived hosts are supported through the containerized build path. Local DevelOS packages and external live-only packages are built inside an Arch container so host distribution packages do not leak into the ISO.

Build The ISO

From the repository root:

make iso

The build script does the following:

Copies archiso/packages.live.x86_64 to archiso/packages.x86_64 for mkarchiso.
Builds local DevelOS packages from packages/ and install/.
Builds external live-only calamares and ckbcomp packages from AUR PKGBUILDs inside the Arch container.
Creates a local pacman repo under archiso/airootfs/opt/develos/repo.
Builds the ISO inside a Podman Arch container.
Writes the ISO to output/.

Package-Only Build

To rebuild local package artifacts without building a full ISO:

make packages

Use this after changing files under packages/ or source trees under install/.

Local Repo Build

To recreate the local pacman repo from already-built package artifacts:

make repo

Live Boot Test

After building an ISO, boot the live environment with:

make qemu-live ISO=output/<iso-name>.iso

If ISO is omitted, the newest ISO under output/is used. This only tests whether the ISO boots. It does not test installation.

Full Install Test

To boot the ISO, install to a virtual disk, and then boot that installed disk:

./scripts/run-qemu-install.sh output/<iso-name>.iso vm/develos.qcow2

The helper uses UEFI/OVMF and resets the VM firmware vars for each run so old boot entries do not pollute install testing.

Useful Files

Makefile: primary build entry point for ISO, package, repo, and QEMU live targets.
scripts/build-iso.sh: ISO build orchestration.
scripts/build-packages.sh: local package build pipeline.
scripts/build-repo.sh: local pacman repo creation.
scripts/common.sh: shared shell helpers.
archiso/packages.live.x86_64: packages included in the live ISO.
archiso/packages.installed.x86_64: packages installed onto target systems.
packages/: DevelOS PKGBUILDs and package-owned files.
install/: vendored suckless source trees used by package builds.